[MD] [MD} The relativity of the MoQ

[John Carl]

So Ham, I'm guilty of invoking the "evil of our culture" eh?  And just by
asking a simple question!  Imagine that.
Please allow me to examine your words to find where I'm invoking this great
evil, and what it portends...

>
> On 28 Aug 2009 at 7:50, John Carl wrote:
>
>  Platt,
>>
>> Isn't a "collective" simply a quantity of individuals?   How can a single
>> individual intellectual person be valued above a collection of intellects?
>>
>
> There you have it, folks!
>
> John has just invoked a major misconception of the postmodern age: 'The
> Greater Good'.  Not only does this ideology lead to moral confusion and the
> death of individualism, but I wouId go so far as to pronounce it the "evil
> of our culture".
>
> This is going to get me into hot water with many of you Pirsig acolytes,
> yet it needs to be said.

 The individual human being is the most precious entity on earth.


As if this was any great insight.  To a subjective mindset, the only value
is the self.  Your entire metaphysics could be wrapped up in the simple
aphorism, "Love thyself" then.  Which is not any new formulation of thought.
 In fact, I'd say with our current classroom culture of teaching blind
self-affirmation for every student - You are special, just like everyone
else - is the true source of evil in our culture because that makes any
individual human quality irrelevant.  Since we're all individuals and since
our individual sensibility of values are so precious to each and every
individual us, we don't need to really pay attention to true values outside
of ourselves.  It's the ineffable specialness of each of us.    Yay us.


If we can't put a price on the individual life, by what calculus can we
> measure the value of  "a collection of lives"?



Well by that formulation then we certainly cannot lessen the value of a
collection simply because it's more than one priceless life.  If you can't
compare value, then you can't.



>  There's no such thing as a collection of intellects or a collective
>> intellect.
>
>

You wouldn't call a faculty committee a collection of intellects?  True,
they are not isolated intellects floating in the world sans body or society
- but they each contain an intellect that is being added to the other
intellects in the room with various inputs and knowledge that makes the sum
more informed and "smarter" than any individual intellect *could* be.


>> Your intellect like your life is yours and yours alone.
>
>

Gee thanks I really needed that.

not.



> (See quote from
>> Pirsig's SODV about individual values.)  If you wish to persist in
>> believing a collection of intellects exists, then you must also see that
>> history is full of examples were a majority of intellects has been wrong.
>>
>
Yup.  And history is also full of (and written by) examples of the majority
coming down on the side of "the right".  Good thing we've got a sound
metaphysical basis to tell the difference.




>
> In the middle of the last century, Ayn Rand wrote prophetically:



Oh puh-leaze... I know very little about Rand, but I do know she tried to
hold a cult-like followership together.  She sure believed in collectives
when she was the one sitting pretty on the apex.


>
>
> "We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage
> where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens
> may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of
> human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
>


Yeah.  Real prophetic.  Right now I don't see a lot of brute force
government.  They can't even keep order in relatively simple desert
countries where the land is flat and there aren't many trees from behind
which to shoot - an american tradition going back some time. the
government-military complex is way too incompetent to take on the American
people if push came to shove.  Duh.  We set it up that way on purpose.



>
> And in The Fountainhead ...
>
> "From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from
> the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a
> single attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.
>

High falutin' words to glorify the self-evident fact that, yeah, we do
think.


>
> "But the mind is an attribute of the individual.  There is no such thing as
> a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought.  An
> agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise of or an average
> drawn upon many individual thoughts.  It is a secondary consequence.  The
> primary act - the process of reason - must be performed by each man alone.
> We can divide a meal among many men.  We cannot digest it in a collective
> stomach.  No man use his lungs to breathe for another man.  No man can use
> his brain to think for another.  All the functions of the body and spirit
> are private.  They cannot be shared or transferred."
>

Utter crap.  If you think the highest ideal is the isolated individual with
no input out output with the rest of humanity, then go live in a cave and
contemplate your navel.  I'm sure there's all kinds of individual quality
you'll find down there in the lint traps of your soul.

But so friggin' what?  If it is not accepted by a society of intellectual
peers, it is nothing.  Literally and figuratively nothing.  Of no value
whatsoever, because a voice hollering down an empty well is a meaningless
voice, and I don't care if its singing with the tongues of men OR angels.
 It's nothing.

To be something, to have any value at all, there must be a communication - a
communing - a community of teller/listener at its most basic, but in
philosophy the community is so much bigger that to ignore it and focus on
the individual - in an age where individualism is rampant and killing us -

Well.  It just sucks.  That's all.

 Ayn Rand.  She'd  throw quality out the window just to be the queen bee.



> Until we realize the truth of this epistemology, we will be frantically
> trying to fit the pieces of our experiential world, including its esthetic
> and moralistic attributes, into a unified whole which does not exist.



Ah yes, and what a shame that would be.  Assuming a unifying good that
doesn't exist, why just think of all the harm that would be done.  People
would treat each other as if they were important rather than emeffers in my
way when I'm waiting in line at Walmart.



> This "whole" that we struggle to construct as a collectivist paradigm is
> our secular culture's substitute for the Creator or Primary Source.  It will
> never work, because ultimate reality is not a collection of patterns,
> levels, parts, or ideas.  It is One in  Essence.


Well, as much as I appreciate your assessment of the situation (not much, in
case you didn't already know) I'll have to pass on your formulation of
ultimate reality.  It may work for your navel but it doesn't work in mine.
 And it's all about the individual, right?


>
> Thanks for your time and tolerance.
>
> Best wishes,
> Ham


You're welcome.  I hope you don't get all offended at my attitude and storm
off into the great emptiness... but honestly Ham.  Ayn Rand is a prophet?
 You and Platt are gonna have to be brought to the woodshed.  I can see it.